She
came to Cornell planning to major in Chemistry, in preparation for a medical
career. She had the highest Math SAT scores in New
Jersey in her graduating year. Her goal was to become a doctor
and work on a cure for cancer.

Mary
Gilliland published her first poem at the age of seven.

After
college she began meticulous hands-on research into New York State herbs,
wildflowers, and plants. Then opportunity came her way: she
and her husband-to-be got to apprentice with her hero, poet Gary Snyder,
and study poetry, carpentry,
and Zen Buddhism. Gary performed their wedding ceremony.

Although
she switched majors from chem to lit, Mary Gilliland’s poetry
remains ecologically and scientifically involved. She honors nature as
material for her work; she uses her work as material for environmental
politics. She has testified at DEC hearings by reading her poems. She
helped prevent the paving of the South Hill Recreational Way by talking
about the importance of this woodland trail to her poetic research and
creative process. Her poems have been anthologized in such publications
as Environment: Essence and Issue.

Her
aim as a poet and an essayist
is to create sacred space for everyday use. In
1997, she contributed to the enlargement of the Standing
Stone Circle at the Foundation of Light on Turkey Hill Road
in Ithaca. In 1998, Mary Gilliland led installation of the Labyrinth,
a walking meditation open to the public, a sacred space constructed according
to the design in the floor of Chartres Cathedral in France.